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August 10, 2014

Regrets, He Has A Few...

Obama has a scream-out-loud sit-down with Tom Friedman, fo-po guru to the stars. I cannot, in hindisght, identify the specific passage that redlined my blood pressure, but here are a couple of candidates:

Intervening in Libya to prevent a massacre was the right thing to do, Obama argued, but doing it without sufficient follow-up on the ground to manage Libya’s transition to more democratic politics is probably his biggest foreign policy regret.

I'll quickly agree that Obama has allowed Libya to drift to disaster, but how, in an interview prompted by our return to Iraq, could Obama not acknowledge the failure to negotiate a sensible Status of Forces agreement with Iraq that left a stabilizing US presence behind? FWIW, he does have a rationalization for that:

But wouldn’t things be better had we armed the secular Syrian rebels early or kept U.S. troops in Iraq? The fact is, said the president, in Iraq a residual U.S. troop presence would never have been needed had the Shiite majority there not “squandered an opportunity” to share power with Sunnis and Kurds. “Had the Shia majority seized the opportunity to reach out to the Sunnis and the Kurds in a more effective way, [and not] passed legislation like de-Baathification,” no outside troops would have been necessary. Absent their will to do that, our troops sooner or later would have been caught in the crossfire, he argued.

So our troops left Iraq, tossing Maliki into the arms of his Shiite sponsor, Iran. But had we stayed, our presence would have been so ineffectual and irrelevant that Maliki would still have jumped wholly into the arms of Iran. Hmm - maybe Obama has more self-awareness than I credit him with.

Folks not yet experiencing apoplexy can try their luck with this bucket of insight from Barack:

At the end of the day, the president mused, the biggest threat to America — the only force that can really weaken us — is us. We have so many things going for us right now as a country — from new energy resources to innovation to a growing economy — but, he said, we will never realize our full potential unless our two parties adopt the same outlook that we’re asking of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds or Israelis and Palestinians: No victor, no vanquished and work together.

“Our politics are dysfunctional,” said the president, and we should heed the terrible divisions in the Middle East as a “warning to us: societies don’t work if political factions take maximalist positions. And the more diverse the country is, the less it can afford to take maximalist positions.”

So to pick an example nearly at random, what about gay marriage versus civil unions? Ah, well, gay marriage is the common sense answer to Barack (now that he has evolved). Nothing maximalist about thinking that civil unions represent a compromise with evil.

Or take Hobby Lobby and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act - the US health insurance industry limped along for decades with a perfectly workable compromise in place which balanced acces to contraception with religious principles. But to hear Barack tell it, the people who now want to preserve that compromise are engaged in a War on Women.

And for a guy to lecture us about "no victor/no vanquished, work together" when he is about to shred the Constitution and impose by Executive fiat his vision of immigration reform which he could not push through Congress (and did not attempt to push through Congress when his party controlled both houses) is outrageous.

It's interesting that I have stumbled across a refuge for neocon dead enders. The people that destroyed my party and gave us Obama. Thank you for all your bad ideas of "taking out Saddam" and making Iraq safe for democracy. How's that working out for you?

@peter - I thought your comment was in jest. I just saw the video at deadspin. Looks a lot like murder to me. He clearly hit the throttle (you can hear the revs) to spin into the guy. Good grief. I won't link it, because it's very graphic. Again, good grief.

There's no evidence the "Lee Atwater protégé" learned a damn thing from him. I'm sure he pulls that out to try and scam donors with much more money than sense. The thought that Atwater would come up with a "compassionate conservatism" crock after serving as an adviser to Reagan has no basis in realistic scrutiny.

Wow! WOW! WOW! If you get a chance, watch the 2nd half hour of Face the Nation. Woodward and Bernstein are talking about Nixon - how he went after his enemies, how he hated Jews, how he wiretapped the press. Every word seems to describe the current resident of the WH and neither they or Scheiffer sees any connection that I can tell. It is absolutely stunning.

I read the President's pathetic attempt at conciliation in the context of Clarice's remarks on bargaining in today's Pieces. He's down to no chips and no cards and now wants everybody to 'play fair and just get along'. I wouldn't mind a thin pretense at doing so, as long as he leaves the game wearing a borrowed barrel.

As far as the current little flare up in the Mahometan garbage dump goes, I'm for anything which aids containment and further disintegration of civil order. I.M.O. - Libya is the model. Relatively small tribes of Mahometan savages killing each other for loot is the foundation of Mahometan lack of society and should be watched from a safe distance.

@Jane - I'd be happy to give TS the benefit of the doubt as to whether he meant to kill him or not, but TS is a raving idiot with a notoriously bad temper. When he drifted his car into the kid, that lap was under caution - no excuse to throttle the engine like that under caution; that's the whole idea behind 'caution' to begin with.

Given TS's racing antics and anger issues, I'd guess he wanted to flare the kid back or maybe clip him a little bit, but it's usually better to fight it out in the pit instead of jacking someone with a vehicle.

Funny, GW wouldn't have won without Rove's brilliant tactics and strategies.

Wait, don't tell me. You're still stewing and blaming Sarah Palin's loss on an innocuous (some would say right on point) very brief comment that Karl Rove made about Ms. Palin once on Fox during the campaign, right?

Well, Rick B, containment seems to be on the order of shutting the barn door after the horses take off.

1. A Yezidi restaurant in Germany was attacked by a mob of angry Isis supporters.
2. An Isis supporter tweeted a photo of the Isis logo in front of the White House, with the notation that next time it would be a bomb instead of a phone.
3. Isis is drawing a lot of support from European and North American passport holders, enough that it makes me concerned that there is an active group already over here.

So while containment would have been good 6 months ago, I think now we are in for perilous times.

The deceased should have never run into the lower track where the yellow flag cars were forced to drive due to his wreck.

He dodged cars to go down there to wag his finger at another driver. Dumb.

Dark race suit at a night race in the corner of a dirt track is not how and where one should go for a "walk."

Having raced an open wheel car I can share with you one phenomenon. You get used to the width of the car at the body not so much at the wheels. New drivers make the mistake of looking at their front tires and throw themselves off course. This phenomenon tricks your mind into thinking the car is much narrower than it actually is. Assuming Stewart even saw the other driver (yellow flag laps aren't the same as green flag laps so you may be looking around, down at guages, etc and not directly in front), he may have thought he cleared him only to have the wider stance of the rear of the car hit him.

This was an accident, IMO. And it was entirely avoidable if the driver stayed with his car and waited for the Safety Crew.

bo's comment about "adopting the same outlook" is tied to all the facilitation that now goes on in public forums involving the Delphi Technique. Its' what the Rockefeller F pushes as Communication for Social Change and is a big part of K-12 via the Discourse Classroom. The idea that we are now to be required to reach a common perspective. It's such a huge part of the Radical marxist grab bag of transformationalist tricks that bo simply assumes it as a matter of course.

It is a huge part of community organizing. Getting people to a common mindset that will guide future action.

As best as I can tell, all the candidates the Rep establishment likes as national candidates are on board with this Corporatist vision. If you follow through on the cites though the links to Just Growth and the Marxist Humanist belief in a needs society and economy of the future are front and center. And towards the end of the relevant books.

We CAN escape this web, but not unless there is widespread recognition it exists.

Beasts, I can't tell if the throttle sound is coming from cars below and closer to the cameraman of if his microphone is catching everything from the corner. It does sound like a throttle blips right at or very shortly after the impact. But it looks like Stewart's car pitches to the left as we hear the throttle instead of to the right where the deceased was standing. It suggests to me that he saw the driver at the last possible second and tried to avoid him by over-steering the car.

I don't see this being a malicious move. Maybe another camera angle will change my mind.

There's a scent of Pitzer in the air - did someone forget to clean a cat box?

Miss Marple,

Vermin control is a constant maintenance problem. The fact that the greatest lie Bush ever told, his reference to a nonexistent RoP, has been compounded by Hussein's fantasies will make maintenance more difficult for a bit but the headchoppers are sure to continue with their savagery to the point where control will be supported.

There is absolutely no evidence that Mahometan savages have become any smarter in the past 1400 years. Their oil money serves to highlight their defects.

Beasts, I should have read Peter's link before I posted. I've heard the incident on the news for hours now and altho I don't really pay attention I heard no hint of wrongdoing, except that one said they "had let him go". It was my error.

lifting this from the other thread and it is way off topic (cause that is how I roll) ...

>>>How to reform the student loan system:

1. No loans for "living expenses" except for residence in a dorm. Costs of getting nails done, trips to Acapulco on spring break, fancy apartments with pools, etc. are NOT ALLOWED.<<<

Financial aid packages are put together based on "cost of attendance" not tuition. The housing component is typically 70% of the average rent in the area and transportation is an afterthought. Dorms, at state schools, are little more than subsidized housing and at most state schools dorm space is no where the level of need, which is why at most schools there is some place called "the student ghetto". Most schools have also built palatial gyms and have all manner of amenities, access to which is based on all manner of fees tacked onto tuition.

>>>2. All loans will be based on the cost/benefit analysis based on average starting salary of the major and employment rate of same. (This means that people who want to go into teaching will not be given $100,000 loans to get a Harvard degree. They can go to Ball State.)<<<

States are starting to publish that type of information so students and parents can make better informed decisions, and loan counseling has become a bigger component of the loan documents. Of note, the average indebtedness of an ***undergraduate*** is about $30,000 and this total allowable amount is capped at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The level of debt has increased over the years because student credit cards have been closed off, parents are no longer able to use HELOC (home equity) to finance their children's education, and more students are having to turn to financial aid to finish their education.

>>>3. Lifetime cap on amount borrowed.<<<

Already in existence. The are both amount limits and time limits for borrowing under the various schemes at the Department of Education.

One more shift to go at the County Fair later today....signing up people to stop the streetcar.
People are so weird. Some lady got mad at me yesterday cause I didn't remember the word "derecho". She said it was a huge rain storm & we had a derecho in Arlington & anyone that lived in Arlington would know that.
I didn't know what she was talking about. I guess we just call big rain storms.....big rain storms in Texas. No special names or anything. I tell ya, that woman was nuts about the word derecho. It was weird.
I couldn't wait to get outta that county fair.

At the farmer's market it was some guy agitated about methane gas around Antarctica...& then yesterday it was "derecho".
I guess if those two people don't like me then all I can say is, "Thank God!".

Welp, I'm glad I took the time to watch "Immortal Beloved" (dry eyes, Porch, kind of surprisingly) rather than establish when my disdain for Teh Architect of 2006 began. Since I didn't start posting here until 2008 or so I have no way to establish that but I stated elsewhere that his biggest positive to me was how insane he made the left. As far as strategy, he won against two dumbass opponents, both of which are probably mentally ill; but in squeakers versus Reagan landslides which were surely available to somebody of the Atwater level of prowess in running campaigns.

Hah!...yeah. San Antonio has just decided to stop their streetcar project. The citizens want to vote on it. So that's cool.
It was interesting to see that the Sierra Club is a sponsor of the pro-streetcar group in San Antonio too. (Also the AFL-CIO!)
It is very sketchy why the Sierra Club is pushing streetcars. I can see them being for mass transit....but why does it have to be this one expensive kind?

@Jane: Didn't intend for my earlier comment to be harsh - I was a little bit disturbed by the video I had just watched, and am admittedly biased against Stewart; the only left-turn guy I really know anything about...

they didn't realize that upsetting the applecart going back to 1945, if not 1932,
would threaten many many players, rocco illustrated the direct business ties of Wilson to the Saudis, namely two Yemeni bros of note,
as well as the ties to COGEMA, the french combine that was indespensible to the trade in Niger, Armitage, Powell, saw this as business,
no matter how personal relationships were shattered as with scooter libby

I came across Syriana, which we now know was financed by Dubai's propaganda arm, and we see how they spun the opposite of the truth,the Middle East institute, where Arabists go to cash in, the Cemter for American Progress,
all these factions, would have their supply of pelf threatened, Scowcroft,Haas, et al, along with Pillar, Lacey and Drumheller who knew better than to upset the OFF arrangements that France and Germany and Ruddia had disquised as principled objetion

Just back from another quiet week-end at the cabin. The summer is slipping by quickly. :( Yesterday morning on Fox and Friends,Tucker Carlson said Tom Freidman looked like a bovine supplicant while interviewing Obama. I laughed and thought that was a descriptive phrase.
We have a peripheral interest in NASCAR because I have a cousin who works for Richard Childress Racing (actually ECR Engines). The young man who was killed last night was only 20 years old. The son of one of hubby's trucking clients in northern Maine has decided to skip college and go into racing. He has started in Nationwide races this season. Hubby has no idea how his parents are going to finance his race team until he gains more visibility and he secures a sponsor. NASCAR needs fresh new faces like every other sport,because it is all about the money.

Final round of the PGA Championship is on in 10 minutes. For the non-golf fans, I'd suggest tuning it in for a little while.

A few reasons: it's an extremely competitive final round for a major championship; there is a mix of rising stars, e.g., McIlroy, Fowler, and older stars, e.g., Mickelson, Furyk, all in contention; and, the course (Valhalla) is very telegenic.

I'd love to see Rory get back-to-back majors, but I wouldn't mind seeing Stephanie's boyfriend grab his first, either.

That's undoubtedly correct, and the focus of most comments on the fan fora, but . . .

It apears to my admittedly uneducated eye that Stewart tried to brush him back. And that could make a plausible manslaughter charge. (Not that I think any will ever be filed or that he could be convicted.)

I watched it several times and I have to agree with TK that the rear of Stewart's car, which is what hit the guy, slides to the left, away from the guy, not toward him as though he was trying not to hit him.
If Stewart saw him then he used very bad judgment in not dropping way down on the track away from him since he was in no way boxed in and if he did try to brush him back then he's an idiot and possibly a criminal one. But the visual evidence is the guy committed one of, maybe the greatest, cardinal sins of racing in walking out into any kind of traffic, even under yellow. The visual evidence I saw also indicated Stewart tried to avoid actually hitting him and I say that as someone who has never liked Tony Stewart even a little.

Of course. The never ending hangover from the French embrace of the Égalité fantasy at the end of the Endarkenment is unlikely to end soon. That isn't stopping the French from expressing their sense of Fraternité by establishing a containment force to limit the spread of the fire from the Libyan dump. The French effort appears to be chasing the more violent headchoppers up to Iraq to help ISIS.

That would be similar to when the KSA was sending its most violent headchoppers up to Anbar to to receive their raisin ration from the US.

Did Hussein intend for the symbol of Arab Spring to be a smouldering dump fire?

Karen and Rove may have been a decent team. After she left Rove was just barely able to fend off the Fitz.

Karen Hughes stayed on GWB's ass to explain himself to the public which he wasn't comfortable doing but it's part of the job. Once she left Rove let him slide and then the other side gets to set the narrative unimpeded. Shocking that things fell apart after that; I'm sure nobody saw that coming.

--Actually, many military readers recognize the fallacy of de-Bathification. It ensured a civil war.--

No it didn't. Removing US troops did.

--It's interesting that I have stumbled across a refuge for neocon dead enders.-

Factually incorrect. I've never been a neocon and most others here aren't.
Nation building and everything besides smashing Saddam was a mistake. But once we chose that unwise course we were obligated, if only for our own credibility, let alone regional stability, to ensure the country remained stable and that could have been and was being done relatively cheaply.

ISIS is not new, in many respects, it is the same faction that made up the Golden Square,
that led the '41 coup and the subsequent farhud,
that toppled Nuri Al Said, and composed the Baath, that made the bulk of the Iraqi resistance, this is separate fom the Arabian Salafi, that swept across Anbar from Syria,
and north from Shammar to the Shia lands,

I believe the swerve to the left that y'all are seeing is due to the kid already being under the left side of the car at that point, and it's jostling the car left as a result. But, I'll go watch it again before golf resumes.

I'll note our friend upthread has commented here in the past under a different name, usually excoriating neocons and naming everyone who disagrees with him as one or defending Ron Paul or Vdare, that curious refuge of conservatives who have gone slightly off their nut in some or all areas.

I think that's exactly right. Stewart has a temper but he hasn't gotten as far he has being insane. He's at the top of a sport that's made him pretty wealthy, no way he throws it away at a dirt race he does for fun, not money.

I wonder if the kid's ego made him want to go shake his fist at Stewart?